Cover me beautiful

BMW's C1 was the first scooter - or motorcycle - to include convincing passive safety features in its specification. Its distinctive roof is there as part of an integrated safety cell, which BMW claims offers almost as much protection in a head-on collision as a small car.

You also get a four-point seatbelt system, a front crumple zone and high-level side protection bars. Although you can still hurt yourself in a C1, you're less likely to be injured than in a similar crash on a conventional scooter. The aim is to win over those people who know that scooters are a good solution to their transport problems but think them too dangerous.

Now BMW has followed up the original 125cc version with the C1 200 (actually 176cc), hoping to spice up a performance inevitably dulled by the machine's considerable 408lb mass, some 130lb more than a typical, well-equipped, conventional 125cc scooter. With an output of 18bhp instead of the 125's 15bhp, it's not a huge increase, but the enhanced torque at lower revs is the most useful aspect of the newcomer, helping to launch the bike from stationary more briskly.

There's a more relaxed feel to the 200 compared with the buzzy 125, as you'd expect, and its top speed of 70mph compared with the 125's 64mph gives you more of a chance on open roads, although motorways and dual carriageways are still battlegrounds between you and HGVs. And you're well advised to concede

But for its extra performance, the C1 200 is identical to the 125 in other aspects of its ride, which means it's still more awkward than a conventional scooter. You notice this particularly at walking pace, stopping for junctions and so on, where being held so firmly upright within the cockpit makes balancing more precarious (in addition to which the centre of gravity is higher). Come to a halt on most scooters and you often tend to lean the bike a little to one side and your upper body the other way as your foot touches the ground. On a C1 you can't do this as the shoulder protectors and seatbelts prevent it, so staying upright depends on being better balanced.

It's not particularly difficult, but it can spell the difference between being confident and a little intimidated, especially to a relative novice to two wheels. This is why I suspect that more C1s will be dropped while parking than other scooters.

In other ways there's lots to commend it, crash protection aside. You get a proper windscreen and wiper, which is an enormous advantage over the usual back-of-the-glove wipe of the visor, and with the variety of storage options (mostly at extra cost) the C1 has plenty of luggage room.

As with the smaller C1, three versions of C1 200 are available: the basic version, the Family's Friend (all you get for £350 extra is a luggage attachment kit and large storage compartment) and the Executive, which adds a reading light, storage net, rack and mobile phone holder for a further £175.

It's not a machine which you'd buy to entertain yourself with its handling or power (although it will keep the neighbours amused), but if you do have safety concerns regarding two-wheeled transport, the C1 stands tall as the only machine with serious credentials in this respect.

The C1 was designed to be ridden without a crash helmet, and all the safety data - which shows it is much safer than a conventional scooter - was accrued without helmets. Indeed, there's an argument that a rider wearing a seatbelt is more likely to suffer neck injuries when wearing a helmet than without. Independent data, and BMW's own tests, have been so convincing in this respect that most EC countries and many others have exempted C1 riders from the requirement to wear a helmet. Only Sweden in the EC is resisting helmet derogation and Britain.

BMW's motivation, clearly, is to sell as many C1s as it can, a cause which helmet exemption would undoubtedly bolster. But there's plenty of sense behind its claims, and no such rationality in the counter-arguments being put forward by the Government. The arrogance and bloody-minded obstructiveness would be funny if it wasn't so frustratingly irrational.

A letter from David Padfield of the DETR, as the transport department was previously called, to BMW's David Taylor said: "Our position is, the compulsory wearing of helmets has been so successful we would not consider derogation under any circumstances, regardless of the merits of a particular case."

That is quite astonishing. It means any new safety invention which might save the lives of motorcyclists will not be allowed in the UK if it means bypassing or superseding the old crash helmet law (which, incidentally, never had a great effect on motorcycle casualty figures).

Quite why this should be has never been made clear, and the DETR refused even to meet BMW to discuss the issue, considering the matter closed.

BMW then contacted transport minister Lord Macdonald, who agreed to talk, but then failed to respond to any communication for nine months before commissioning a report by the Transport Research Laboratory to look into the existing BMW and independent data.

The TRL decided that it needed to do its own tests (and to be paid for them by the Government of course), and there, more or less, is where the issue stands today.

BMW's original question from three years ago was only this: what procedures need to be gone through in order to apply for helmet exemption? Note that exemption itself wasn't applied for, this was merely a request about the best way to proceed.